What's on TV: Monday, 17 September

12 September 2018 — 10:30pm

Hugh's Fat Fight

SBS, Monday, 8.30pm

Britain's version of the obesity crisis that's befallen consumer societies is particularly harsh: one third of children aged between two and 15 are now overweight or obese. For Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the formerly rumpled self-reliant farmer of the River Cottage series, that's a call to arms as well as a ready hook for a TV series.

Hugh's Fat Fight.

The host employs familiar tactics: he samples schoolkids' eating habits and engages their parents, as Jamie Oliver has, while food multinationals who practice deceptive packaging, such as sugar-rich breakfast cereal giant Kellogg's, get the Michael Moore treatment with lack of access turned into a condemnatory ritual. It's familiar but cheerfully direct, with Fearnley-Whittingstall waging a fitness campaign in Newcastle, but maybe more is needed to have a genuine impact. CM

Modus

SBS, 11.35pm

Taken from vast and inexhaustible reserves of Scandinavian crime fiction, this adaptation of Norwegian author Anne Holt's thriller about a Swedish criminal psychologist, Inger Vik (Melinda Kinnaman), and her partnership with a Stockholm police inspector, Ingvar Nymann (Henrik Norlen), suggest we're at peak Nordic noir: blood stains in the snow, a mysterious killer who circulates like fog on the water and whispers threats, and conflicted witnesses tied to past malfeasance all feature.

Vik's connection to the case is personal, since her autistic daughter, Stina (Esmerelda Struwe), is the one person left alive who has encountered the killer. On this episode they also investigate the murder of Sweden's top celebrity chef, which turns out to be a grisly crime and definitely not a ratings ploy. CM